‘Stephen King’s Pet Sematary’: The book is better

Many producers of horror movies in 1989 must have taken their cue from screen legend Ed Wood and come up with titles before making their films. Among the offerings that year were, “Chopper Chicks in Zombietown,” “Clownhouse,” “Flesh Eating Monsters,” “Lobster Man from Mars,” “Las Vegas Bloodbath,” “Monster High,” “Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator” and “Wicked Stepmother.”

You just know from the names that those are bad movies.

One horror film that year did hold promise, however, because it was based on a well-known book, Steven King’s “Pet Sematary,” which was published in 1983. However, some have argued that King’s writing hit its high point with the heavily edited version of “The Stand” released in 1978. Others, meanwhile, contend that — with possibly the exception of the miniseries telling of “The Stand” and the motion picture version of “The Tommyknockers” — his books simply don’t translate well to the screen.

“Pet Sematary,” which now is available on BD, is the story of a doctor, Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff) who moves his wife, Rachel (Denise Crosby, whose abbreviated Lt. Tasha Yar hairstyle from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” desperately tries to compete against her padded-shoulder jackets designed to accompany 1980s-quality Big Hair); daughter, Ellie (played by twins Blaze and Beau Berdahl); toddler son, Gage (Miko Hughes); and their cat, Church (short for Winston Churchill and played by a bunch of different gray felines) from Chicago to a small town in New England.

The house they move into is across a busy road from one occupied by Marlboro-smoking, Budweiser-drinking Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne, the man who, so to speak, made Herman Munster come alive). A cagey Yankee, Jud is quick to warn them of the dangers of fast truck traffic. He also promises to lead the Creeds down a path they’ve discovered at the back of their property and tell them its interesting story.

What’s at the end of the path is a pet cemetery (a hand-lettered sign misspells it “sematary”) where children bury favored animals that fall prey to the road traffic. Beyond that, however, is an old Indian burial site where the ground has gone “sour”; things buried there come back to life, but not in a nice way.

Naturally, Church ends up as street pizza, so what does Jud do? Despite his own bad experience at resurrecting a dog, he directs Louis to bury the beast in the old Indian site. For his part, Louis goes along with the idiocy despite being warned by the friendly ghost of the one patient we see him attending, Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist), that raising the dead isn’t a good idea.

Church shows back up, but he’s no longer a nice kitty. Instead, he’s a glowing-eyed demon that smells bad and constantly leaves Louis covered with scratches. This would probably convince most people that the ghost knew what he was talking about, but not Louis.

Next, a truck knocks young Gage right out of this vale of tears, so a very public funeral is held. Afterward, his mother and sister go back to Chicago for a visit, while his father stays at home. A night of drinking convinces Louis of the absolute need to dig his son out of the local Boot Hill and replant him in the Indian site. (Doesn’t anybody in horror movies stop to think about the ramifications of resurrecting somebody? You know the authorities would get involved at some point. How could you possibly explain it?) Louis then goes home and crashes out on the bed.

Wife Rachel, in the meantime, has a bad feeling about what’s going on, thanks to ghost Victor (for some odd reason, she doesn’t see him like Louis does but gets his general message). She hops a jet and rushes home, where devil child Gage is back, wielding a scalpel liberated from his father’s medical bag and has been busily chowing down on Jud.

Louis finally comes to by the simple expedient of falling out of bed. He sees muddy, toddler-sized footprints in his bedroom and finds his scalpel is missing. Finally realizing that the dead should remain that way, he loads up some hypodermic needles with poison and goes to do battle with his son and cat.

Extras: When I first started watching “Pet Sematary,” I accidentally turned on the running commentary provided by director Mary Lambert. Needless to say, I quickly turned it off. The disc also contains features titled “Stephen King Territory” that explains how the writer came up with the original story, “The Characters” that talks about the actors and actresses in the film and the parts they played and one called “Filming the Horror” that discusses the movie as a project.

The bottom line: As with many of King’s tales, what’s a genuinely horrifying story in print comes across on the screen as more silly than scary, even when presented in Blu Ray splendor.

Robert Kolarik

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[...] (Fred Gwynne) hides a dark secret connected with the cemetery. Robert Kolarik was game enough to review this one for us. Extras: behind-the-scenes featurette, cast interviews, commentary, featurette, lenticular [...]

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